Expanding the Fleet

I've been biking around Columbus since I moved here in 2022. I love riding a bike so much! It's given me so much independence to move about the city and engage with my community without having to bankrupt myself through car ownership or rely on getting rides with friends or Columbus's lovely but insufficient public transit options. The longer I ride, the more I feel that even if I could afford a car and was comfortable going back to driving, I wouldn't want to anyway. Getting to start my day everyday outside, moving my body just can't be beat.

Frank: 2023 Rad City 5 Plus by RadPowerBikes

When I first moved to Columbus, I had a $90 Walmart hybrid mountain bike. It didn't fit me well and it had no racks, so I ended up just taking the bus to work and walking to the store. When I later made the decision to buy an electric bike for a job where i had to haul equipment between buildings, I gave away my mountain bike to a friend, and I've been running on just the e-bike ever since. I nicknamed the bike Frank recently after downloading Strava to keep up with some friends. This bike is my pickup truck equivalent. It was sold as a commuter bike but a 60 pound, class 2 e bike with a heavy duty rack and panniers is really more of a cargo bike, best suited for hauling weekly grocery runs rather than a laptop and a box lunch. I had a scare a few months ago while commuting where my motor quit for about a day, and then started working again, and I looked into what it would take to replace Frank. As it turns out, after their bankruptcy and acquisition, RadPowerBikes doesn't sell the Rad City line anymore. The e-bike mechanic I got Frank serviced by after the incident didn't have much positive to say about Rad's acquiring company, and couldn't recommend me a different brand in case Frank did bite the dust. That incident got me thinking i needed more than just one bike in my "fleet".

Jesse: 1987ish Schwinn Mesa Runner

It wasn't just the issue with the motor on my e-bike that had me thinking about getting a backup. An e-bike is great, but it's a pickup truck of a bike. It's basically impossible to travel with outside of sticking it on someone's car - you can't fly them anywhere because of the lithium-ion batteries and they're too large and heavy to stick on a bus. And I love traveling! It would be so nice if I could take my bike on a bus or a train and head out to Boston where my sister lives, and be able to ride my own wheels around town. Besides the convenience, I've been increasingly interested in the idea of a bicycle tour. I've got no interest in the racing side of cycling, but a bike holiday is right up my alley. Outdoors, seeing new places, traveling with just what I can fit on my bike frame is my idea of a perfect getaway. So after giving it a little thought, and looking around at the options for new bikes that could do what I needed, I went out to the bicycle coop and picked up Jesse, a 1987 Schwinn Mesa Runner. The Mesa Runner is a rigid all terrain bike sold by Schwinn from about 1983 to 1988. It's got a chromoly steel frame, cantilever brakes, and riser bars. And it has mounting points for a rear rack and a bottle cage - perfectly serviceable to build into a touring bike. While Franklinton Cycleworks cleaned up the bike nicely, I'm working with a Craigslist bike mechanic to update the drive train, and with my sewing friends to get together a good selection of frame and rack bags for the bike. In the meantime it's perfectly ride-able, so I'm transitioning my commute rides to it, to build up some acoustic bike stamina after years on the e-bike.

What's Next

Now that I've broken the seal of buying and building out bikes, and I've established a relationship with an independent mechanic, it's a constant test of my will to not buy up every $50 vintage bike on Facebook marketplace. I'm held back only by my lack of storage space for bicycles. Outside of that, I'm planning to work my way up to riding the Ohio to Erie Trail, a bike route that goes from Cincinnati to Cleveland, passing through Columbus. While I originally hoped to work in that ride this summer, I think I'm going to stick to weekend trips to cut my teeth on bike camping and long rides. Maybe I'll make the full trail in the fall around thanksgiving? we'll see what the weather is like that time of year. I'm also looking forward to multimodal transit now that I have a bike that's allowed on the bus bike racks (which have a 50lb weight limit and don't allow electric bikes anyway). Maybe I'll even experiment with taking my bike on greyhound buses!